


Extremity

by Drakontion



Series: Heart's Ease [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:10:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3135653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakontion/pseuds/Drakontion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish that he did not only sigh but roar.</p>
<p>Matthew Henry (1662 - 1714)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extremity

**Author's Note:**

> Set post game. 
> 
> Ir abelas.

The wolf is a pack animal, but the Dread Wolf walks alone.

 

He howls his heart to the unfeeling Void. It's lost amidst the empty depths, not even remnants returning to him.

 

He's aching sadness and regret; ancient sorrow and grace tangled in a multitude of schemes and complications; solitude echoing emptily throughout all the ages.

 

He pads through the Fade and the world, at home but not home, endlessly, dreadfully, terribly alone.

 

Lit by Fade-light, gilt by veilfire; he treads twixt stars and moons, a convoluted path that meanders through worlds and lives and loves. It's a track he's followed before, leading into loss and ruination, the death of what was held dear, and the dearth of dreams to come.

 

He scatters mistrust before him and trails despair like stardust, secure in the insulation of his deeds, both real and legendary. There is no one more reviled than he.

 

Perhaps it's better there's no pack, after all.

 

But oh, how he longs, how he tries to belong, how he insinuates himself into their ranks, still aloof, still separate, separated, but there.

 

He reaches, but hanging over him always is the spectre of disaster - ominous, tangible, ancient - it clouds the very air around him and deadens his step and his breath like a coffin of lead and blood.

 

He slept too long, and in waking, beheld his legacy to the People he loved, and longed for sleep again.

 

He's terrible in his glory, glorious in his terror, chained to a course he's trying desperately to escape.

 

He remembers a shining crown, the burden of command; long fingers plucking elegantly and effortlessly at a tapestry of crystalline lives, fragile, shining, lost. He used to balance the weight of this world and the Fade, trip between them on a whim, laugh without care, care without laughter, and called it a life.

 

He was arrogant. He was young. He was alive.

 

Tonight, however, he's none of these things. Tonight he's merely a man, somewhat tired, a bit hungry, slightly stoop-shouldered. He has aching arms from painting and the beginnings of a headache from staying up too late reading by candlelight.

 

The trapping of the age he woke to find himself in are worn uncomfortably, however, like new shoes at the end of a day's march. He's playing at being less than what he is; and less than what he is is still less than what he was; and if sometimes even he gets confused by this it's only to be expected.

 

He can't command armies, now, he's not that man any more. He lost the right when he lost the war.

 

That's a job for someone else, someone unbowed by the weight of mistakes, by regret and loss so massive, so crippling, that he forgets to breathe, forgets to laugh, forgets to hope.

 

The Wolf steps in the shadow of a Herald of a god he doesn't believe in, but he believes in _her_ , and it's the first belief he's had in an eon. He frantically watches, guides, nurtures from his sideline, desperate to heal the hurt he made happen; gathering skeins and braiding them into a solution.

 

If his nudging grows more desperate the longer it takes he can't be held to blame for that, at least.

 

The only tie he forgot to knot was the one that held his heart shut. An oversight equal to the error of the ages, to the man. To the Wolf, though, it's everything he fought for the first time, made new and real.

 

It is _why_.

 

And so the Dread Wolf dreads, and hurries away from hope, but not too late for hope to find him, and her. And hope hurts, hope heals, hope helps and it harries and it hinders. He doesn't deserve that, _can't_ , so he harrows the hope and turns away from her tears.

 

Hardens his heart. (But it's not.)

 

And he howls all alone in the snow when she's gone, because the Wolf can't cry like she can. His anguish is the Fade and dreaming is his agony.

 

But his howls, oh how his howls shake the world and the Void and everything in between.

 

The world cries with the Wolf, unaware.

 

Fitting, no?

 

(No.)


End file.
